Three Words to Break Darth Vader
by HarisaEnaja
Summary: Vader is interrogating a prisoner who says she can break him with just three words. One shot. Vader Angst. The idea bugged me until I could get it out last night.


**A/N: I own nothing. Disney literally owns everything and it's a little scary. But so far I like what they've done so...**

 **Takes place sometime right before A New Hope.**

* * *

A week of interrogation and the Queen still hadn't broken.

Darth Vader was becoming impatient. He knew she had conspired with the rebel alliance, using her position as Queen of Naboo to provide them with ships and trained soldiers. He was also fairly certain that her contact was the young, pesky senator from Aldreron. But he had no proof and Queen Aladima refused to break.

She was strong willed, and proud. So much like the other Queen of Naboo he had known so well. She even resembled her….the same dark hair, the same regal aloofness. But she was too tall, the angles of her face too sharp. It was theses differences Vader forced himself to focus on. He couldn't afford to see _her_ in the face of Queen Aladima. He couldn't bare to even think about her, the pain of her loss was still too great. Even after all these years.

When he had marched into the palace at Theed, his first time returning to the planet since….. _before_ , he had felt a sense of utter wrongness looking upon the outraged painted face and not recognizing the features beneath. The whole planet reminded him so much of _her_ that every step, every glance hurt.

And he had taken that pain out on the young Queen during her interrogation. He used torture injections to increases her pain tenfold, and he invaded her mind. He rummaged through her secrets like they were loose papers on a desk. But still she stubbornly kept what he wanted hidden.

"Your strength is admirable, but futile. You cannot keep this up forever." He told her factually. "I have the power to destroy you through the force."

"And I could break you with three words!" She snapped, momentarily losing her cool as she panted in-between invasions.

Under his helmet, Darth Vader raised a single eyebrow skeptically. He could since that she believed her words to be true, but surely she was mistaken. Three words capable of breaking him? A Sith Lord?

"I very much doubt it." He sneered, before once again continuing her interrogation.

* * *

Another week and Queen Aladima still had not broken. He was still unable to find the identity of her contact within the Rebel Alliance.

"Tell me who you were working with, and perhaps I can convince the emperor to let you live." He tried to reason with her. Despite his frustration with his own failing, he had grudgingly come to admire her resolve.

The Queen said nothing. She just stared up at him with the cool emotionless that was the trademark of her position.

"Then you will die." Vader declared, sweeping from the room.

Sure enough, the next morning the Emperor declared that the Queen would be executed. She would die by firing squad in her own thrown room, her death broadcasted across the galaxy via holonet as a warning for other potential defectors.

She was allowed to clean up. To once again paint her face and do her hair, so that the woman who was lead through the great hall was once again the picture of a Naboo Queen. Vader met her at the final entrance.

"Have you no last words?" He asked her condescendingly. "Why not reveal theses three magic words you claim could break me? You will die soon. This is your last opportunity."

The Queen just glared up at him defiantly. Darth Vader responded with the equivalent of a scoff.

"Just as I thought. No more than a bluff!" He flicked his hand dismissively and the guards took it as their clue to size the Queen and drag her out to her execution. She resisted, a look of real fear and emotion crossing her face as she glanced back at Vader. Her eyes were a mix of outrage and hatred.

"It was twins."

The words slipped from her lips without her consent and her eyes grew wide in horror. The guards froze, even they sensing that the words had some unknown significance.

"What?" Vader snapped, annoyed at what he assumed was her attempt to buy for time.

The Queen took a deep breath and straitened herself up to her full height. The way she looked at him wasn't the regal mask he had come to know over the past few weeks, but was apologetic and almost pitying.

Vader clinched his fist. He needed no ones pity.

"Aladima is my political name, my real name is not often advertised. I never wanted my family's reputation to influence the people's opinion of me." The Queen explained. "I was born Ryroo Naberri."

Dead silence fell over the room as even Vadar's respirator had somehow stopped working. He was holding his breath, shocked to his very core to hear the one name he never thought he'd hear again.

Naberri.

 _Naberri_!

The tall and proud woman before him was one and the same as little Ryroo. Images, memories of a happy little girl playing with her sister outside their family house, of eating a meal around the table together, of her hugging her aunt and secret uncle bombarded him as he stared at her in horror.

"It was twins." Alad…. _Ryroo_ said again, her face filled with compassion. "The doctors told us it would have been a boy and a girl, had they have lived. They asked us if we wanted to…..take them out and burry them separately, but Grandmother thought they should stay with their mother….."

Vader staggered backward until he was leaning heavily on the pillar behind him as the meaning of her words hit him. Twins. A boy and a girl. He had almost had two children. He had murdered both of them…all three of them! _Twins_!

They stood there in silence for a long time, the Stormtroopers waiting patiently for a clue from Vader to continue escorting the prisoner to execution. But Vader was caught up in his own whirlwind of self-loathing and disgust. One so deep he didn't even register the events going on around him.

Finally the Stormtroopers seemed to realize that further instructions weren't coming, and found the initiative to continue with their escort duty. They tried to usher the Queen out the large double doors, but she shook them off raising her head high. She marched toward the door, once again the regal monarch her people recognized.

She paused at the doorway and looked back at the still parlayed Vader.

"I'm sorry. I hope you find peace….Uncle Ani."

The dark lenses of the mask snapped up. His brain was slow to recognize the name, his former name, spoken so softly and once again with affection. It awoke some deeply hidden part of him, and he staggered toward the open door through which Ryroo had disappeared. He was almost there, when he heard the squadron captain give the order.

"Fire!"

The Pew, Pew of blaster fire echoed through the air as Vader rounded the corner. He saw the Queen's body jerk and twitch as each blaster shot hit its mark. She fell, as if in slow motion, to the ground like a rag-doll, her beautiful brown curls splaying out around her on the round.

And the Mighty Darth Vader fell to his knees…..broken.

* * *

Before he left Naboo, Darth Vader made one last stop. He walked alone through the royal gardens and into the mausoleum that contained the remnants of his family. The last vestige of his soul.

She was there. A stone carving of her standing regally over her own sarcophagus, as if protecting it.

No, not protecting it. Protecting the two little bodies that also rested within. Protecting her children. _Their_ children.

 _Ryroo will soon rest in a place like this_ , he thought to himself and made a note to make sure her grave was near this one.

He didn't deserve to be there. He didn't deserve to be able to see her face again, even if it was only a statue. But it was so painful, surely the pain was a worthy punishment? The pain, he certainly deserved.

He had killed her. He had killed her children. He had killed her beloved democracy. And in a way he had even killed her husband. Now he had also killed her niece.

"I'm sorry, Padme" He whispered, so quietly his voice enhancer didn't even pick it up. It was the first time he had said her name in nearly twenty years.

But there was someone else he had to apologize too aswell.

"I'm so, so sorry." He said, louder this time. He imagined two tiny bundles, freshly swaddled. Two tiny faces looking up at him, craving his protection and love. Protection and love he had failed to give them.

"I will always love you…." He whispered to all three of them. As if his declaration now could make any difference.

But somehow it did, because Sith Lords didn't love. The man who had been solely Darth Vader was no more. The man who knelt at the grave of his family wasn't yet Anakin Skywalker again either, but he was closer. The chains of the dark side had begun to crack.

All because of three words.


End file.
